


Roman Holiday

by gillywulf



Series: Beautiful Stranger, Here You Are [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 18:06:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19323352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gillywulf/pseuds/gillywulf
Summary: The bird may love the fish, but where would they live?orClarke and Lexa live very different lives and still find a way to fall in love with each other.





	Roman Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> Inspo from Halsey's "Roman Holiday" as well as my commute home on Friday.

The night was a rare mix of chilly and clear that needed to be taken advantage of. Usually, when it came towards the end of May, the skies opened up and drowned the land in sudden and destructive rainfall. And yet all the pair in the truck bed needed was a tattered old blanket that Lexa kept rolled up in the toolbox for just such occasions. With their shoulders pressed together and the blanket covering their legs, they were almost cozy. 

Clarke lived for it. 

Nothing in the world made her happier than stargazing with her best friend the night before a tour. It was the moment she thought about when she was on stage in front of 20 thousand people. All of those people shouting her words back for her like they were tattooed on their hearts and her brain could only flash back to this truck bed with this girl and this sky. 

A hand nudged hers in the limited space between their bodies. 

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” The rumble of Lexa’s voice might have startled her if not for the small movement before it, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t caught off guard anyway. Lexa had a habit of doing that. She responded with a soft hum. 

“I think so. I’ve got all my clean underwear packed,” she grinned at the laugh that floated through the empty air around them and felt her heart grow with affection. 

“Good to know. You have to make sure you can go as long as possible without doing laundry,” Lexa joked. “but really, it’s a big tour. A long one. I know you can handle the shows and I know you will be okay with the travel, but I worry.” Clarke turned and found Lexa already looking at her. 

It was moments like this that made her feelings hard to swallow. Lexa cared so much about her and she always cared about the right things. How could Clarke be anything but disastrously in love with her? But how could she tell her either? Lexa loved the overgrown, back roads life of their half-empty hometown and Clarke loved visiting a new bustling city every night, strange encounters, and finding her face on magazine counters at checkout (they were always full of preposterous things like who she was dating, as if she would date anyone without green eyes and wild brown hair). Her smile was soft as she laced her fingers with Lexa’s. 

“I’ll be okay, I promise. And if I’m not, I know who to call,” she answered. Lexa nodded and gave her hand a soft squeeze. 

“My only price is a picture of you and J-Lo.” Clarke burst into laughter. 

 

~

 

Lexa pulled as far forward as the narrow driveway would allow her and cut the engine. She could see the client through the windshield - a middle aged woman who definitely would over-direct this delivery - and sighed. Most days she liked her job, but that didn’t stop the niggling dissatisfaction every time she saw Raven post about a new project, or Octavia’s expanding personal training work, much less reviews for Clarke’s upcoming album in Entertainment Weekly. She was happy her friends were doing things they loved, she just wished she was too. 

She followed her partner out of the truck and approached the woman with a smile and her clipboard. 

“Good morning, are you-”

“You were supposed to be here an hour ago. Now I’m going to be late to pick up the cake for my son’s birthday party because _you_ couldn’t get here yesterday,” Lexa felt her smile deflate. 

“I apologize for the delay ma’am, we work as hard as we can to keep close to the schedule. If you sign here to confirm we are delivering the right product, we will get out of your way as soon as we can.” The woman signed with a huff and Lexa moved around to the back of the truck where she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. Lincoln was till unstrapping the oven on the pallet so she took the chance to unlock her phone. Her face stretched into an immediate grin. 

“Clarke?” Her gaze shot up from her phone to meet her partner’s amused eyes. She nodded, her cheeks growing hot. With one last look at Clarke’s selfie with J-lo, she locked her phone again and set about helping Lincoln unload the new appliance. 

 

~

 

“You know she’s like desperately in love with you, right?” Lexa collapsed against the table in a coughing fit, her eyes trained on Anya. 

“What?” she rasped out. Anya gestured to the bar TV where Clarke’s newest music video played, the sound drowned out by the DJ’s party music. Scantily clad and radiating unbridled confidence, the blond was a force of nature and impossible for Lexa to ignore, in-person or otherwise. 

“Yeah, she’s been in love you since like, sophmore year of high school. All her songs are about you. Did you not know this? You guys knew that, right?” She looked to Octavia and Raven for backup and found them already nodding casually. 

“Oh yeah”

“I think literally everyone knew” 

Lexa blinked between them, dazed. 

“What- no, she writes about  guys. Why would she want me? I’m nobody,” Octavia barked a laugh and swiftly drowned it in her bottle of beer. She only caught the tail end of Raven’s eye roll.

“She writes about guys because it’s more commercially viable and she’s not out publicly, so, you know. But also you’ve been her best friend forever, you’re hardly ‘nobody’ to her, don’t be stupid,” This was the first night that none of them had to work late in almost a month and Lexa was beginning to regret coming. 

“I mean you had to suspect. She’s not exactly subtle,” Anya had turned her whole stool to face Lexa, her eyes narrowed in disbelief. The scrutiny began to make the heat rise under Lexa’s collar. She had to find a way out of the interrogation. “Wait,” her blood ran cold, “you like her too.” Her hand came up to shield her rapidly reddening face. 

“No, I-”

“Oh my god”

“Holy shit” 

“Lexa-”

“Have a good night, I have to be up early tomorrow. You know, a lot of deliveries,” Lexa slipped off her stool and stalked towards the door, careful not to look any of them in the eye.

“Wait, Lex-” She was out the door before she could catch the rest of the sentence. 

It was almost five full blocks before her heart stopped beating directly in her eardrums and her breathing slowed enough for her to take stock of her surroundings. Downtown was small enough that she was already out of any populated areas and she kept walking until she reached the empty field she and Clarke parked her truck only a couple of weeks before. 

She let herself get lost in the stars for an hour before pulling out her phone.

“Hey, is something wrong?” The roughness of Clarke’s voice both calmed and excited her. It was so easy to picture her curled up on the sofa of her tour bus, fresh from a shower and wrapped in some comfy sweater. She smiled at the image. 

“No, everything’s good. I just wanted to say hi. I saw your new video,”

“Oh yeah?” The smile in her voice peaked out and Lexa stopped holding back her own. 

 

~

 

The sun was dead above and beating down harshly against the back of Lexa’s neck. She had felt the moisture in her shirt for almost 2 hours, but she wasn’t going to move from her perch on the roof of her truck. 

Octavia had strewn herself across the back seat of the cab and Raven and Anya were bickering as they attempted to construct some sort of awning over the bed. Lexa was sure Anya was just sabotaging it to spend more time with Raven, but decided that wasn’t her business. 

Mercifully, no one had brought up the night at the bar two months before. She didn’t know what she would even say to them. Admitting it was certainly out of the question, but she wasn’t about to lie and deny it either. Ideally it would just stay a moot point. 

“Girls, does anyone want a drink? It’s hot out today,” Dr. Griffin called from her front porch. Lexa’s truck was parked right next to the house where there had been shade earlier that morning. A chorus of ‘yes, pleases’ sounded from the group and Clarke’s mom disappeared with a smile. 

Clarke was late, but the two hour radius around their town was a dead zone on their network, so there was no real way for them to know when she got close until they saw a trail of dust up the road. Lexa’s eyes were locked to the spot where she knew the bus would first appear. 

Raven must have gotten fed up with Anya’s meddling because the lanky woman was clambering up onto the roof with her. 

“Scooch,” Anya dug and elbow into her side until Lexa shuffled over with a huff. “Do you think you’ll tell her?” she asked softly a minute later. 

“There’s nothing to tell. Whatever I do or don’t feel won’t change anything,” Was that the bus or just another car? 

“You don’t know that for sure,” Lexa hummed and frowned at the shape of the minivan that drove into the driveway down the street. 

“It’s too late anyway. Ten years is a lot of time to get over someone,” That was a big cloud. That had to be it.

“It’s also a lot of time to feel more for someone.” Lexa stood as the bus came into view. 

“Bird and the fish, An,” Lexa was only dimly aware of Anya’s heavy sigh as she hopped down to the ground  as the bus began to pull up to the house. Dr. Griffin came back outside, drinks forgotten and eyes glued to the door of the bus. They didn’t have to wait long before Clarke burst out of the door and threw her arms around her mother. It was barely a second later that was instead threw herself around Lexa, holding her as tight as her strength would allow. Lexa returned it easily and pressed her face into Clarke’s hair. 

“Welcome home,” she murmured. 

 

~

 

The stars were different from the last time they were there together, but to Lexa, who could hardly string together a constellation on the best of nights, they looked the same. There was comfort in that. An assurance that things could stay the same, no matter what happened. There was a chance that she could always end up here, Clarke in her truck and the stars above them. She wanted that more than anything. 

“You should come with me,” Lexa was sure she heard wrong until Clarke spoke again. “It doesn’t have  to be tomorrow, I know traveling the country is a big thing. But one day, I’d like to do it with you,” Clarke wasn’t looking at her, instead she focused on the expanse above and Lexa couldn’t blame her. Words wouldn’t come and there wasn’t any she could even think of. 

 

~

 

“Clarke?” Lexa answered the phone as she slammed the truck door shut. She ignored Lincoln climbing in to the passenger seat with a raised eyebrow. 

“Are you busy this week?” Clarke’s voice sounded shaky and Lexa hated the way it made her jaw clench in fear. Had something happened?

“Besides work, no. What do you need?” she asked. A sigh traveled through the phone. 

“I need a vacation. But if you have work, I don’t want you to get in trouble” Clarke mumbled. Lexa’s answer was immediately obvious. 

“Hey, do you remember that night you convinced me to sneak into the community pool with you?”

“And we had to run from the cops almost naked? Of course,” Clarke laughed. 

“Good. I’ll call you in an hour, okay?” She turned the engine and pulled her seat belt across her body. 

“Sure. Oh, and Lex?” Lexa paused. 

“Yeah?”

“I miss you,” Her heart clenched. 

“I miss you too, I’ll call you back,” She closed the call and moved the massive truck into reverse. “Lincoln, I’m supremely sorry, but I’m driving back to the garage and quitting.” To her surprise, he only laughed. 

“Going to rescue your girl?” he asked, giving her shoulder a hearty pat. Lexa grinned, but didn’t respond. 

 

~

 

Lexa tried not to spend the entire two plane rides worrying about how she was going to get a new job. She ran through the list of possibilities in her head and wrote down a list of the top contenders. The list was underwhelming. With a sigh, she turned her head to look out of the small window and watched as the ground came closer and closer. The last minute cross country flight certainly didn’t help relax her money fears either. 

But really it was unimportant. Her boss had been furious and begged her to stay on, but also vehemently refused her a week and a half off to see her friend because they had a schedule they needed to adhere to. So she walked out and could only think about where Clarke wanted to disappear. If there was something Clarke wanted, Lexa was not going to be the one to deny her.

Which meant the tiny Sacramento airport was a bit of a surprise. From the window, Lexa could see the whole thing, small and compact in comparison to Philadelphia International or JFK. She could even see the empty grasslands stretching out for miles around it. 

The inside of the airport wasn’t much more exciting. Many of the gates were either entirely empty or halfway there. Lexa shrugged through the early morning haze and made her way down to the baggage claim where Clarke said a car would be waiting. She was barely out on the curb before a body crashed into hers and wrapped her up in a tangle of limbs. 

“You’re here!” The familiar raspiness of Clarke’s voice in her ear relaxed her instantly and she dropped her duffel to return the embrace. 

“I said I would be,” she laughed, feeling Clarke’s legs fall back to the ground from around her hips. The blond pulled back just enough to take Lexa’s face in her hands and grin. 

“And you always keep your promises. C’mon, let’s get on the road,” She grabbed Lexa’s discarded duffel and threw it into the backseat of the closest parked car before swinging around to the drivers’ seat. Lexa let Clarke ramble for almost an hour before asking. 

“So I have to ask, why the sudden get away?” She watched Clarke press her lips into a firm line, “you don’t have to tell me, but it might help to talk about to someone who is really removed from the situation,” she said, keeping her eyes on her best friend. The silence was short lived (though palpable, as Clarke had been so excited to get on the road she hadn’t even turned the radio on) as the right words were pulled from her brain. 

“I wanted to come out and all of my reps think it’s a bad idea,” Lexa frowned, “they think if I’d started my career that way, it’d be one thing, but my sales will take a hit now that I’m established.”

“Do you agree?” 

“No. I mean, yeah, I’m sure there will be some backlash, but I’ve done well enough and built a fanbase that I think will welcome it. It’s not like I don’t bring rainbow flags on stage all the time as it is. I just want to write about girls sometimes too, you know? Maybe there’s a girl where a guy would be in a video. Little things that shouldn’t mean anything, but would let me be more honest,” Clarke gushed and sighed heavily. “I’m just tired of pretending.” 

Lexa took in the defeated way Clarke slouched in her seat, how she seemed smaller than she knew she was. She knew her friend to be larger than life and this was not acceptable. How dare anyone tell her to hide parts of herself?

“There was a girl at a show a few months ago and she was telling me about how the new album gave her the courage to come out to her family and all I could do was nod and brush off just how much that meant to me,” she huffed, letting her hands collapse into her lap. Lexa chewed on her next words. 

“So do it anyway,” Clarke’s eyes swiveled between her and the road. 

“What?”

“You employ these people to manage your career, right? This is their job. Be you and let the rest fall where it may,” she shrugged. She worried for a long moment that what she’d said was totally incorrect for the situation. What was she thinking? This was Clarke’s decision, she had nothing-

Clarke’s hand closed around hers.

 

~

 

Job listing sites had plenty of options but none of them seemed to be what Lexa was looking for. Nothing paid enough to support her lifestyle - minimal as it was - or put too many qualifications that no human should be able to match. She sighed in frustration and clicked on the next page. Her phone broke into vibration, startling her. 

“Hey, what’s up?” She greeted, skimming the next page. 

“You’re joking right?” Anya deadpanned. “You have to be joking. ‘What’s up’ like you don’t already know,” she continued on in disbelief. Lexa blinked. 

“No, I don’t know. Did something happen?” She was answered by the sound of Anya grumbling under her breath. 

“Jesus, google Clarke,” Lexa’s internal alarm immediately started clanging in her head. Questions and concerns raced through her mind as the page loaded. 

_**Clarke Griffin Comes Out as Bisexual After Weekend with ‘Close Friend’  
** _

Just below the headline was an image of Clarke hanging off her back, her mouth maybe a little too close to her neck after Lexa had described the cat lady house she’d delivered a new refrigerator to. They were both sun kissed and relaxed as Lexa carried her towards the beach at Lake Tahoe, Clarke’s choice for a getaway. She had to admit, the angle did make her abs look great. 

“Oh,” she mumbled. 

“Yeah, ‘oh’, did you guys finally seal the deal? Admit some stuff? Come clean? Please tell me you kissed her.” In all honesty, Lexa had forgotten the phone next to her ear.

“Uh, no. She asked for advice and companionship, so I gave her that. It wasn’t the time,” she explained. The sigh that followed was clearly disappointed. 

“If you’re not careful, the timing will never be right.”

 

~

 

The night was chillier than the weather channel had predicted, indicative of colder nights to come in the following weeks. But the stars were no different than they ever were as Lexa pulled the blanket tighter around Clarke and herself. She’d remembered another blanket this time, a thicker one to lay under them to guard against both the cold of the metal and it’s hard ridges. Come morning, a sore back would be uncomfortable for Clarke’s transatlantic flight and Lexa’s new job. 

“I think about this when I’m on stage, you know,” Clarke confessed into the darkness. Lexa knew that turning to look at her would put her just too close. 

“Yeah?” 

Clarke hummed. “When I’m on stage and there’s all there people and they’re so excited to see me, all I can think about is this and you and how it’s so much easier,” Lexa did look this time. Clarke’s face was relaxed against her shoulder, her eyes tracing constellations she knew far better than Lexa. 

“Is that what you want? Easy?” she asked. The blond laughed and the sound shook her whole body. 

“Lex, I’m what they call ‘An International Pop Star’, I don’t think I ever wanted easy,” she answered, burrowing deeper against Lexa’s side. Anya’s phone call a few months prior flashed through Lexa’s mind and she let out a shuddering breath. 

“It could be, easy I mean,”

“What could be?”

“This. Us,”

“‘Us’?”

“Yeah, if you want,” Lexa’s heart thumped unbearably loud in her chest, Clarke had to be able to hear it. She was so close. Any moment now the gentle let down would come and they’d slowly and awkwardly disentangle from one another until Lexa decided it would be best to just drive her home. 

Clarke’s fingers laced through her own and squeezed. 

“Babe, this is the easiest thing.”


End file.
